Wolfgang Streeck

Skills and Politics: General and Specific

Abstract

Skills and skill formation have become central topics in contemporary political economy.
This essay traces a key concept in the current debate – the distinction between
general and specific skills – back to its diverse origins in American postwar labor economics,
comparative industrial relations, and human capital theory. To show how the
distinction has evolved over time and between disciplines, it is related to other dual
classifications of work skills, like high versus low, broad versus narrow, theoretical versus
experiential, professional versus occupational, explicit versus tacit, extrafunctional
versus functional, and certifiable versus noncertifiable. The aim is to reconstruct how
notions of skill generality and skill specificity came to be used as the foundation of
an economistic-functionalist "production regime," "varieties of capitalism," or "asset"
theory of welfare state development, and generally of politics under capitalism.